Christmas Kisses

Jillian’s skin was warm, her face flushed, and the sound of her cough was enough to have my nerves on edge.  I’d bundled her up and trudged over to see her kidney doctor (I’ll call him Dr. Kelly). Standing in his office, I held her close and hoped he would say it was a cold, or an ear infection – anything but what my mommy-instincts were telling me it was.  But he sat down on the little round stool, looked at me, and said, “I think she has pneumonia, and she’s going to need to go to the hospital.”  It was Dec. 23^rd, 2002.

Since her first Christmas, the one spent in the ICU, Jillian had received her kidney transplant, and while there had been plenty of bumps in the road, she had been mostly doing well.  I was excited to spend Christmas at home, and Kate and Tom were eager to have a “normal” Christmas, too.  The presents were wrapped and tucked away in closets, the stockings were hung by the chimney, and I had every intention of making up for lost time.

“She’s going to be home for Christmas, though, right? Please don’t make me have to tell them she won’t be home for Christmas,” I pleaded.  But wishing doesn’t make it so, and Dr. Kelly – then and now, one of the most compassionate and dedicated I’ve ever met – knew that my deepest, darkest fear was not only that she’d be sick for Christmas, but that she’d need the ventilator, again.  I was, in a word, terrified. 

By the afternoon, Jillian was in the hospital, feverish and needing extra oxygen to keep her breathing steady.  I watched as all the not-quite-too-sick kids were discharged home for the holiday, and I listened to the nurses chatting about how the snow was falling outside.  I talked on the phone with Ken, and my parents, and tried to figure out whether or not to bring the gifts to the hospital.  Mostly, though, I sat with Jillian and tried not to stare at the wavy lines of the machine that monitored her breathing, tried to ignore the fact that steps away from this room was the place we’d spent last Christmas, tried to smile at all the nurses stopping by to visit. 

I heard a knock on the door, and a petite, smiling woman with two children stood in the doorway.  “Hi, I’m Dr. Kelly’s wife, and these are two of our children.  We’re so sorry Jillian has to be in the hospital again this year, and we wanted to stop by and give you these.  We hope it helps, a little.”  She stepped into the room, holding four brightly-decorated gift bags. One for Jillian, one for each of the older kids, and one for me.  The children’s bags had toys, and crayons, and Christmas coloring books, and I started to cry a little.  Then I opened up the bag for me, and simply started to laugh.

Dr. Kelly had been with Jillian for nearly her whole life, and he inevitably saw me at my worst when she was in the hospital.  He knew I pretended to read “real” books while I was actually reading trashy romance novels.  He knew I owned a pair of slippers that looked like cows.  And he knew I couldn’t survive 24 hours in the hospital without chocolate.  And so, nestled in tissue paper in the bottom of the gift bag, was a supply of Hershey’s kisses, with a note that said, “For Mom”.